Friday, March 5, 2010

Walking around my neighborhood this afternoon I spotted a new addition to the scenery.

These guys:

They kind of look like a mom and baby to me.... There was another one too and I'm excited by the thought that I might encounter more in the future.

Another nice thing I noticed is that some bulbs I planted in the fall (and totally forgot about) are peeking out of the soil! They're some tulip bulbs that the Conservatory Garden was giving away at the end of summer. Can't wait to see what color they'll be...

And lastly, I'm making apple crisp today. And this makes me very happy. I use Martha's recipe. The only changes I make are that I don't use lemon juice because I don't feel like buying it and I don't peel the apples. It takes so long to peel 3 pounds of apples and I'm a big girl, I can eat apples with the peel on.

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Now that spring is right around the corner, I feel like my mind keeps wandering to thoughts of seeds and dirt and herbs and flowers. This little video by Postcarden.com isn't helping either.

Logan and I are moving to a new apartment later this month and it has a shared backyard... The woman who lives there now says it's really just a big patch of dirt. I've got some little ideas swirling around in my brain regarding that dirt patch... they involve morning glories... I feel like those guys will grow pretty much anywhere. Right?

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

My hand is there just to give you an idea of how big the blanket is so far. And the colors in this photo aren't really quite right. The part that looks black is really a nice chocolate brown, and the red stripe is really more raspberry.

Right now I'm trying to decide if i'll pull my sick self out of bed to go out and buy more yarn...

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

I'm sick. I had a bit of a cough all weekend and by Monday morning i just had to call in sick. And then again today. And tomorrow too.... Ugh.

Yesterday I tried to convince myself i wasn't really sick by being productive. I made a big pot of black bean soup from scratch with some vegetable stock i made over the weekend. Then i spun up some merino. The colors of the wool are pretty bright and i wasn't sure what kind of yarn to make so I spun three singles. Two of them i plied together and one I plied with rainbow thread. Then I knit a couple of swatches:

The 2-ply is on the left, the thread plied is on the right. I wasn't really into either one. The 2-ply is a little too muddled and the thread plied feels insubstantial and looks a little odd.

So then I made a three-ply yarn by navajo plying. Here's the swatch:

I like this one the best. Navajo plying takes the longest but there's no sense in making yarn I won't use. And it's good practice; I'd really like to start putting some hand-spun yarn in the shop.

I've been working on the giant granny square blanket a lot. It's a good thing to work on in bed. I'll show you my progress tomorrow.